Russia, EU, US trade threats on trade sanctions

posted at 10:01 am on March 5, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

It’s a busy day on the Ukraine front, but action appears to have given way to a confused mass of chatter. The West still struggled to come up with a unified response to Russian aggression in Crimea before it spreads to eastern Ukraine, while Vladimir Putin tried a few threats of his own to split his opposition. Ukraine’s new government offered up a concession to attempt to move Russia out of its country. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov today, attempting to, er, reset the crisis before it hits critical mass:

Kerry and Lavrov are expected to meet on the sidelines of a long-planned conference on Lebanon, which is likely to be overshadowed by ongoing tensions in Ukraine, according to the BBC.

The top diplomats from Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., Britain and France are not necessarily all at the same table, but French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said everyone has been working non-stop for a diplomatic solution over the crisis in Ukraine.

Not all at the same table, eh? Now there’s an analogy of the last couple of weeks in a nutshell. Lavrov warned ahead of the sideline klatch that Russia would not tolerate a “coup” in Ukraine, a point that they’ve made rather forcefully over the past week:

“If we indulge those who are trying to rule our great, kind historic neighbor, we must understand that a bad example is infectious,” Lavrov said.

Members of Congress are leaning on Europe to back meaningful sanctions on Russia, making personal phone calls to convince allies that the Kremlin should be punished for its incursion into Ukraine.

The members are worried about signs that Great Britain and Germany oppose deep sanctions, and say they won’t work without cross-Atlantic unity.

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“The president is very right to keep the focus on Europe, because we cannot influence Moscow on our own,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told The Hill on Tuesday as he ran to make phone calls with German lawmakers.“It’s unfortunate the Europeans are not taking a stronger stand on this,” said Murphy, the chairman of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe.

He said the countries of Eastern Europe will be watching closely, wondering who is next.

“If Russia gets away with this, in the same way they feel they got away with the Georgia incursion [in 2008], I don’t know why other countries that are former client states of Russia would feel that they’re safe,” he said.

Russia’s parliament has a message for Washington and Europe on sanctions, too:

Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers were working on a draft law to allow the confiscation of property, assets and accounts of European or U.S. companies if sanctions are imposed on Russia, RIA news agency said, according to Reuters.

This is what is inelegantly known as “crapping the bed,” and perhaps a measure of just how far Russia has gone in its imperialist orientation. Moscow had to spend billions of rubles to keep its currency afloat this week just with the hint of possible sanctions, and its MICEX stock market took a bath. If Russia returns to Soviet-era expropriation, they can forget about large-scale investment from the West for the near- and mid-term future, and the standard of living under Putin’s regime will plummet. That means less money for everything, including military adventures in eastern Europe and — more critically — domestic security in the Caucasus. Such a move will impoverish everyone, but Russia more than most, and gone are the days when Moscow could control media access to fool its subjects into thinking the West was worse. Normally one would consider this an empty threat, but the only rationality one can find in Russian policy at the moment is imperialist expansion, and that would fit reasonably well into that context.

Ukraine’s new prime minister, in his first interview since taking office, told The Associated Press that Crimea must remain part of Ukraine, but may be granted more local powers.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the AP Wednesday that a special task force could be established “to consider what kind of additional autonomy the Crimean Republic could get.”

That could give Putin enough of a win to claim victory and depart the field. On the other hand, even if that works, it probably wouldn’t be long before Putin comes back and demands the same deal for eastern Ukraine, too. Not to carry the pre-WWII analogies too far, but this sounds a lot like what happened with the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia in 1938. When a military power decides it needs lebensraum, it’s usually not satisfied with these kinds of concessions for long.

Actually, the first casualty of Politics in any form, whether internal or international, is truth…just to get that out of the way.

Whatever the initial actions (and I love a good conspiracy theory as well as the next guy) we now have what could be understatedly be called “a problem.” So…what do we really think will happen!

I have heard for mor than 5 years now that Mr. Obama is the smartest guy in the room. Well, I am not too sure how big the room is, or how many people are in it…or, for that matter, how smart the other guys are (and, of course, women). And regardless of the truthful answer to who is the smartest, I would offer the concept that “smarts” isn’t really the criteria for who is going to prevail.

Consider the concept that it is “focus”, not “smarts” that will carry the day.

As far as foreign policy is concerned, President Obama clearly (from his track record) suffers from ADD. If he can focus on a foreigh policy element for more than an hour (and then, only if he is giving a speech), it is a miracle. I would wager more than a house or two that after making some public utterance on anything to do with foreign policy, he turns immediately to domestic campaigning for how is is going to fundementally transform America.

Meanwhile, Putin is totally focused on his foreign policy aims, remains focused at all times and it never leaves his mind: he intends on restoring Russia to the empire that it used to be, and it will be ruled just as he ruled the KGB.

And Puting will succeed for the rest of Mr. Obama’s term in office. Without a strongly lead American desire to meaningfully react, the other European nations will do nothing…it would be too risky to go it alone and they are totally aware that any promises of support from the United States will disappear just as soon as the TV sound bite is over and the President goes back to what he feels is “really” important.

The protestors started peacefully, they decided to throw molotovs at the APC’s attempting to crash their gatherings after the government decided that using snipers was a really awesome idea.

Self defense must be an old fashioned idea.

Bishop on March 5, 2014 at 10:42 AM

That’s nonsense. Before the snipers were used the “protesters” had already started killing policemen, including burning several alive after trapping them in their vehicles. Then a truce and agreement for early elections was reached, which the “protesters” violated by rushing the retreating police with Molotov cocktails and other weapons (the “protesters” have admitted they are the ones who broke the truce, that’s not in dispute). At that point the police responded with snipers.

You can argue that police overreacted in their response to the violent mob, but the idea that these were just “protesters” peacefully chanting and holding signs when police opened fire on them is disconnected from reality.

And it’s a fact that if the “protesters” had just honored the truce and the early elections agreement, Ukraine would still have Crimea.

Flashback: Senator Obama pushed bill that helped destroy more than 15,000 TONS of ammunition, 400,000 small arms and 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles in Ukraine

Obama traveled to Ukraine with Sen. Dick Lugar in 2005 just seven months after he became a senator, touring surplus weapons stockpiles.

Most of the small arms and ammunition were left over when Soviets withdrew from Eastern bloc nations, and later dumped in UkraineThe two senators secured U.S. funding to help destroy the weapons instead of leaving them intact

Ukraine exported more than 700,000 small arms in 2004-2007, including 101,000 each to Libya and the UK, and 260,000 to the U.S.
But most of the ammunition stockpiles – crucial for keeping a standing army battle-ready – were destroyed
Ukraine is in a staring match with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has designs on recapturing portions of the former Soviet nation

Tell that to putin. He’s the one quoting dubya to justify his actions. Seems like that horse is very much alive.

everdiso on March 5, 2014 at 12:40 PM

Also kind of interesting, if you think about it. Putin didn’t pull this B.S. while Bush was president… he waited like a true predator to find the weakest of the herd. Cull, stalk and devour. Little boots is less than useful to us now.

The narrative is already being floated, it was Ukraines fault.

Remember it however you will, but I will always remember it the way it actually happened, not the way it is revised.

You don’t get that Putin is likely just giving 0bumble another noogy?
Given how long 0bumble has been blaming Bush for everything, Putin is just throwing that in 0bumble’s face – and libtard useful idiots don’t get the joke.

Bush was on the way out already, he graciously followed Little Boots policy KNOWING little boots would work his own will once the rudder was under his hand.

Had Bush actually thrown the gauntlet down all Putin had to do is wait till little boots was at the helm. Little boots probably would have thrown in Poland as a bauble in all efforts to appear to be the Anti-Bush.

Your premise is extremely flawed…

Next?

As a general rule I do my best thinking late at night, apparently the day trolls are just as mentally weak. :-)

This whole thing is the fault of the neocons who encouraged the Molotov cocktail-throwing “peaceful protesters” in Kiev to overthrow their elected government, instead of just waiting a year to replace it at the ballot box.

Jon0815 on March 5, 2014 at 10:28 AM

Have you seen the pictures of the personal mansion Yanukovich built himself? He was not going to “lose” the 2015 election and there is no way Putin was going to allow him to lose. After looting the country for three years, Yanukovich and his allies were not going to permit figure to take power and start investigating his abuses in office.

The protesters knew this was their last chance to rid themselves of Putin like dictator who had no intention of giving up power.